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Now in its seventh year, Viva la Novella is once again open for entries.

We want your novellas. We want extraordinary stories surprise, unnerve, discomfort and inspire. The competition is open to all genres and in the past we have awarded the prize to dystopian spec-fic, a reimagined Colonial story and realist fiction amongst others.

Seizure invites Australian and New Zealand writers to submit their completed novella manuscripts for consideration. We are looking for two writers, who will each receive a $1000 prize and publication with Seizure in print and digital formats.

What isn't a novella? Collected short stories are not novellas, they are short story collections. Also, we're sticking with fiction but that includes auto-fiction, semi-fictionalised life writing and any other narrative-based autoethnographic work you care to mention. We're open to all genres but also works that self-identify as anti-genre.

Why a novella? Because they are great. You don't need big word counts to communicate big ideas and you don't need eight hundred pages to tell a great story.

What’s the prize? $1000 + print and digital publication with Seizure. Winners will have their manuscript carefully shepherded to publication by an editor and the Seizure team. The winning novellas will be designed with the usual Seizure flair and unleashed in digital and printed form in bookshops, on our website and ebook retailers.

• All persons, other than immediate family members of Brio Books Pty Ltd or Seizure volunteers, may enter the competition.

• The manuscript should be a work of fiction between 20,000 and 50,000 words in length.

• The manuscript must be an original work, written entirely by the entrant and it must be written in English.

• No more than 10 per cent of the manuscript can have been previously published in print form, or in electronic form.

• The judges’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into.

• The judges shall have the discretion to divide the prize equally between authors of entries they consider of equal merit. If, in their opinion, no entry is worthy of the prize, no winner shall be chosen. No entrant may win the prize in successive years.

• Pending acceptance of the publishing contract and reaching publication, winning entries will each receive a cash prize of AUD$1000. In addition, Seizure will publish a printed and electronic edition of the novellas.

• The publishing contract offered to the winners is based on the standard Brio Books Publishing contract and includes 10% royalty on print sales and 50% on ebook sales. Please note, the prize money is not an advance against royalties, royalty income is generated from the first sale.

• The winners will be notified in strict confidence February 2019, at which time they must agree to keep this news confidential until the simultaneous announcement and publication of the winning entry in 2019.

It is with great pleasure that we announce this year’s winners, two novellas very different in tone but alike in quality. Swim by Avi Duckor-Jones is a vital, vivid work on facing the past while being daunted by the future. The Bed-Making Competitionis an intimate and witty look at the joys and strains of family life.